


ring them bells

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Season/Series 15, Sick Sam Winchester, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: Sam Winchester is saved.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 56





	ring them bells

There are anodynes in the air of heaven, where the roads roll endless into one, and angels on the radio might once have sung out, full-circle and single-toll, for a brand new soul with his hands on the wheel.

*****

“I can’t,” Sam says, and he’s talking to his dog (his brother’s dog, _Dean’s dog_ , which is a phrase he never thought he’d say, so when he says it to himself now he sinks, hands in the fingerlong hairs, hands in his own hair and twisted up in his brother’s bed, and chokes, shocked, on his own sounds).

Dean’s dog whines at his back, hellhound-opposite, pulled soft-tight like a circle of salt.

Your brother is dead, a voice says, and it doesn’t matter whose it is.

_Your brother is gone._

*****

Sam follows the only roads he knows: bunker-trails, dog’s-paws, the marks of Dean’s boots. The bunker rings. It aches. He runs the dead roads; returns to breathe at the place where he built Dean’s pyre. Ash in the air; ash in the air.

You’re not going to bring him back, a voice says, and it doesn’t matter whose.

_You’re going to turn your back on death._

_For once._

**_*_ **

Can’t turn your back when everyone needs a story, when everyone wants the one you won’t tell. Suddenly: Alicia and Max, a memory of when they saved him, at their dead father’s party, from having to talk about hell.

They knew. They knew what it means to be severed.

Don’t you want to—Jody asks on the phone, and she means, you know, _celebrate the life_. Remember.

No, Sam says, and then, maybe one day, because she knows too.

He ran in rain this morning, leaden, coughed all the way back and cried for the lost ash, the way he couldn’t smell his brother’s fire.

You’ve got to—Jody says, but she knows better; she knows.

Sam pets his dog; his brother’s dog, the dog that god made and couldn’t take back.

*****

Sam thinks:

Lebanon is shuttered.

What about heaven.

He puts on a hoodie, black, and walks the bunker-bounds; can’t bring himself to drive the car. Eats every other day and sometimes throws it up. Tries to read. Archive. Hold this place that was never home but is full of his brother. Mausoleum of Dean’s swords, guns, pictures and porn; he wrapped Dean up in his dead man’s robe.

Charlie says on the phone, I don’t think—

_I don’t think you should stay there alone._

Donna says the same, and Garth, and Eileen, who shows him the sign for _grief_ , for mourning, who holds him and lets him sob, silent, on her steady shoulder.

She knows too. Since the banshee wailed, she knew.

He reads about weeping women, women in white, women who drown their own and widow’s-walk; brothers who never come back from the sea.

*****

He takes calls, hands off cases; listens to the dog whine in the night. Watches his eyes run dry.

Prays. To Jack. To Dean. To anyone.

There are toxins in their wax boxes, curses, bullets and bowls full of bitter. All of the ways he could—

Go.

You’re not going to go, a voice says, and it doesn’t matter whose.

_The line between will and acceptance is thin._

He doesn’t even know what that means.

*****

I can’t, Sam says, and he’s talking to his dog, Dean’s dog, the one whose nose is on his face and needs to trot rocks outside the bunker door, scent the morning.

I can’t, Sam says, and only the ghost of him does; takes his dog, walks, runs the Sunday stream and the church chimes and chokes, every time he thinks of what Dean said, wet scent of hay and his life running out.

*****

You can, a voice says, and it’s Dean’s, sounds like.

Sam is so sick. Dean’s bed and the dark and his brother close by.

Dean's a ghost driving his way through heaven, the voice says, looking for you.

Sam sits up, slams on the light.

There was no bark to warn, no—

dimensional tingle; nothing.

Had to hex the wee doggie, the voice says, just for a bit, so we could talk.

You look like haint yourself, the voice says, and there she is, black-veiled, plain and unlike herself; woman-form on the end of the bed.

I’m—Sam says.

A bit under the weather, she says, but no, not dreaming.

Something about that cracks him, sinks him in his hands.

Rowena says: Samuel, Samuel, _Sam._

It hurts, the hitch of his breath.

Ah, Rowena says, ah, and something slips, menthol, into his lungs and his larynx, his eyes.

He sits up and looks at her, twists the wet neck of his tee.

Are you going to leave all this behind, she says, walk the earth?

I don’t know, he says, I thought—

That the supernatural was gone, she says, hardly.

Those who are gone are gone, she says, and it’s a mercy, believe me.

How can you—Sam says.

Say that to you? Rowena says, because I can. Like I can tell you to keep what you need, watch out for these archives; be a man of letters. But live. Listen to nature. Get therapy. Get married. Or don't. Have a child. Be visited by ghosts, whatever you need. I don’t have to tell you Samuel, but the dead are everywhere. You know that; your brother did too. Or you’d remember it if you weren’t so bound by these Judeo-Christian--

You’re the queen of _hell_ , Sam says.

Ah, she says, touché. But still a witch.

He watches her hand move, canary-quick, slip something small onto the bedside table, close by the base of his brother’s lamp.

_Now sleep._

*****

In the morning, Dean’s alarm sings out. Dean’s dog jumps on the bed, thumps while Sam parses a card with a faint hit of psi.

There’s a name on it that he doesn’t recognize.

_Psychic, “direct line to the divine.”_

There’s a picture in which she doesn’t smile, but he sees it.

She has Dean’s eyes.

*****

There's ash in the air of Lebanon; Kansas winter, dead center of time and space, where all roads roll to the horizon, where the drifts rise and angels might once have walked, sung, full-circle, for all the lost souls with their hands on the wheel. 


End file.
